


a gift to the sea (been called allegedly free)

by Anonymous



Category: The Daevabad Trilogy - S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24119533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Yaqub might have been Nahri's oldest friend, but she hadn't seen him for years, and somehow she didn't think he would react well to "he subsumed an ancient artefact of great power without any preparation and then we traveled halfway around the world by magic."
Relationships: Nahri e-Nahid & Alizayd al Qahtani
Kudos: 14
Collections: Anonymous





	a gift to the sea (been called allegedly free)

**Author's Note:**

> More CoB/KoC-reread-inspired fic. I had a surprising amount of feelings about how Nahri should get to eat meat if she wants to eat meat, damn it. I've written shorter fics to get my OTP together than I have to get Nahri walking free and eating meat.

_"Ali,"_ Nahri said, kneeling on the sand, taking his face in her hands. His eyelids were fluttering and his eyes were rolling beneath them, but they found hers, and focused.

At the very least the whites of his eyes were still white, not the oily dark of the marid possession. "Nahri?" he choked out.

"Still me." She sat back, looking at the pale dawn of the sky. 

The landscape was beginning to seem as familiar as the river. They weren't in Cairo, but they weren't far from it, either. The knowledge slowed her racing heart, smoothed her panic. She was _home_. She was safe.

"Your brother," Nahri said, and her voice caught in her throat. She hadn't loved Muntadhir, in the way she'd supposed she would love a husband, but she'd lived with him for five years, and they'd loved many of the same people. She supposed that, until last night, Muntadhir had been the closest thing to family that she had known, but she didn't want to think about her family right now. "He said it could take several days to heal from assuming the Seal." Ali had begun to tear up, but she didn't know if it was from emotion or pain. "It's supposed to feel like this, Ali. You're not going to die from it." She hoped. Muntadhir had said it wasn't supposed to leave Daevabad, but it wasn't like Nahri could go back, even if she'd wanted to. She barely knew how she'd gotten them away in the first place.

"It feels like I'm dying," Ali whispered.

She swallowed and wanted to tell him that that wasn't helping. She remembered the way it had sounded when her mother had broken his bones. She remembered the sprawl of Geziri corpses everywhere. She remembered the dark blood flowing from Ghassan's nose and ears and mouth. "Well, you're not," she said. "But if you want to, you can lie here in the sand and wait for noon."

Ali looked up at her and let out a startled laugh. "At least you're not shoving ground locusts and oryx blood down my throat," he said, finally, and let Nahri help him to his feet. He was wobbly, and he was heavy, and he was-- _sweating_.

She glanced up at him, but he didn't seem to notice. Nahri had never known a djinn, no matter how badly they were injured, to sweat, and she wondered, as she placed a hand on his back and he stiffened, if it was part of the marid possession. It was a lot of sweat. Perhaps he wouldn't have died in the desert after all.

Normally, the walk from this now-deserted village--Nahri recalled it, from before the French had invaded, as a small place with a blue-tiled mosque and an elderly woman who roasted some of the best coffee she'd ever tasted--would have taken two hours at most, but with Ali's weight on her shoulders, and his fumbling footsteps, it took at least twice that long, and the sun was high in the sky as they approached the city.

Nahri eyed the line of laundry that hung from a nearby building. She reached up and, with a burst of magic, called a wind to blow down two abayas. She let Ali lean against a low wall as she shook the clothes free of dust, and then out.

"Strip," she told Ali, pushing the larger of the two abayas at him.

He wasn't feeling so poorly that he didn't immediately blush. "Why?" he asked, trying to push her hands away like she was going to tear the clothes from his body if he didn't obey.

Nahri snorted, and dragged her own tunic off. "First," she said, pulling the smaller abaya over her shift and trousers, "our clothes are far too rich. We're lucky no one met and robbed us on the road. Second--" She held up her tunic. "Blood. Burns. We look like we've come from a battle--which we have--but we don't need to call attention to ourselves. Third," she said, as he finally took off his dishdasha, and she hastily averted her eyes, even though she'd seen him mostly naked, not to mention in her bed, the last few times he'd nearly gotten himself killed, "your clothes are soaked through." She took his dishdasha and squeezed it out, water running between her fingers.

"Oh," said Ali, sounding a little dazed. She reached up to tug the hood over his head, and ripped a piece of the dishdasha off to create a scarf to cover his mouth and that scruffy beard.

"It won't be long," she said, offering her shoulder for support again, and shoving some sand over the discarded Navasatem finery to hide their tracks as much as she could, as both were too damp to burn. "I know a place in the city where we can rest."

-

For what might have been the first time, Nahri let the bell ring as she entered Yaqub's apothecary. She didn't want to surprise her old friend, but it was also impossible to maneuver around the door as she half-walked, half-dragged Ali with her. He really was inconveniently tall.

The shop seemed almost as it had been when she'd left it, although now, having worked in the palace infirmary, she could spot the method, the order to the bundles of herbs on the shelves, the mortars, the pestles, the jars. "Oh," she said, distracted, admiring what he'd done and she'd never noticed, and then Yaqub was there.

"Nahri?"

"How can you tell it's me?" she asked, pulling her hood back. Her hair was damp with sweat, and it felt good to air it out.

"Who else would drag a half-comatose--" He peered closer at Ali. "--man disguised as a woman into my shop in the middle of the day, after half a decade away?"

"Thanks," she said, not entirely sarcastically, as he took half of Ali's weight, and they walked him through the cramped shelves and narrow shop to the back room.

Yaqub cleared off a workbench and she helped him lay Ali out on it. Ali groaned and pushed weakly at Yaqub, and then his hand crept out to touch Nahri's.

"What happened to him?" Yaqub asked, taking the strip of cloth away from his mouth, and mopping Ali's forehead. 

He might have been Nahri's oldest friend, but she hadn't seen him for years, and somehow she didn't think he would react well to "he subsumed an ancient artefact of great power without any preparation and then we traveled halfway around the world by magic." "Migraine," she said, and prayed Yaqub wouldn't notice how pointed Ali's ears were, or how his skin shone, or the weapons underneath the stolen abaya. "He needs a cool, dark place to lie down."

Yaqub just looked at her. 

Nahri shrugged. "It's happened before?" Ali's pulse beneath her fingers alternated between racing and being thready and weak, and he'd grunted as they'd walked the last half an hour, instead of complaining about the pain, and she'd suspected it hurt too much to speak. She could sense nothing of his body, because of his entanglement with the marid, so she didn't know how badly he was hurt by Suleiman's seal. His forehead didn't feel like it was burning up, and there was no ash on his skin. If Nahri didn't know better, she'd have thought he was merely hungover. She'd been married to Muntadhir for five years and was intimately familiar with how that looked.

Somehow, that thought caused a wave to grief to sweep through her, and her knees buckled. Before she could fall, Yaqub caught her.

"Thank you," she said. He wasn't any younger than he'd been the last time she'd seen him. 

Yaqub sighed. "He is, I think, not the only one who's suffering."

Nahri shook her head. "I'm fine, I just...." She couldn't find the words to encapsulate yesterday. Nisreen had died in her arms. She'd tried to save as many of the wounded from the parade as she could, but so many had died, and that had been before Daevabad had been attacked, and even more innocents slaughtered. And it had been _Dara_ , who was not dead after all, and her mother, who had also survived somehow, who'd done it. Who'd destroyed the place she might have eventually accepted as a home. "I took your advice," she said, dabbing her eyes with her sleeve. "I got married."

Yaqub looked up from sliding another cloth under Ali's head. "Him?"

Nahri blushed. "No. His brother. He died." He'd died buying them time. "We had to flee."

"You were attacked?" Yaqub asked, tucking the hood of Ali's abaya back.

Then he froze, and swore at great length and greater creativity in Ladino.

Nahri froze.

"Child," said Yaqub, sounding very tired, "what have you been playing with?"

" _I_ haven't been playing with anything," Nahri said. "Things have been playing with me."

Yaqub sighed. "I will make him a compress for his _migraine_ , and then I will make you some tea, and if you decide you want to, you can tell me about it after you've rested."

Tea sounded good. Rest sounded good. Nahri could have cried, she was so happy to be here, to be home. The shop felt small and close, and comfortably human. Yaqub reminded her of Nisreen, in a way, or Nisreen had reminded her of Yaqub. "Please," she said, swallowing, and went to sit next to Ali as Yaqub went upstairs.

"He recognized the Seal," Ali whispered.

Nahri jumped, then hit his arm. "Don't scare me like that! I thought you were--"

"He recognized the Seal," Ali hissed again.

"He's a friend," Nahri said. "I trust him. And if he knows what it is and what it means, maybe he can make sure it doesn't kill you."

Ali shook his head. Of course, for all that he'd been interested in humans, he'd distrust the first one he met. Djinn were disappointingly predictable. "It wasn't supposed to be me, and it wasn't supposed to leave Daevabad."

"Do you want to go back?" Nahri asked, deadpan, but of course he did. Her friend was absolutely insane enough to rush back to Daevabad, despite it being under the control of some of his worst enemies. Thankfully, before Ali could open his mouth to say that yes, he did want to go back, wouldn't it be great to get the both of them killed, Yaqub came back into the room with a tray of tea and cakes. The tea smelled of mint, and Nahri sat with her cup, inhaling the odor and absorbing the warmth long before she took a sip.

Ali managed to nibble his way through one of the cakes before he started yawning. The fact that Yaqub had only offered one to him, and a half-forgotten memory, told Nahri the cakes were laced with opium. She wouldn't have warned Ali if she'd remembered in time, though: he needed to rest, and to heal, and he wasn't listening to her when she said those things.

"You've both come a long way," Yaqub said, "and must be tired."

"Yes," Nahri said. "My friend more than me." Ali glared at her, but she sipped her tea and waited for the opium to drag his eyelids down. "You need to rest," she told him. "Yaqub and I can give you tinctures and poultices to lessen the pain, but your body has to heal itself."

"I can't--" 

"If you even try to go rushing back for vengeance before you're healed, I will _sit_ on you."

Ali blushed at that, but he was as weak as a kitten right now. Admittedly, he was a kitten carrying three blades, one of which was poisoned and could set itself on fire. And Suleiman's seal. 

"You couldn't push me off," she said. "Not in your condition. _Rest_ , Ali."

"But--" he began, then yawned hugely, then blinked, as if surprised by his own tiredness.

"She is right," Yaqub said, and patted Ali's shoulder. "Rest. Whatever is chasing you cannot follow you here." And his voice was so calm, so certain, that Nahri believed it herself for a moment, even though she knew that Dara knew where she was from, and that he would come looking for her soon enough. But if Yaqub could convince Nahri of that, even briefly, then Ali, who was in pain, and drugged, stood no chance against Yaqub's soothing authority.

Once Ali was asleep, his eyes closed and his breathing genuinely slow and even, Yaqub smiled at Nahri. "You wish to explore the city," he said. "It's been years."

"Yes," she said. "It has." She'd missed Cairo, and she hadn't exactly had a chance to look around with Ali hanging off her neck. And she did not know what else to do. Get Ali safe, and healthy again, but that would take time. She herself felt better already, being in Cairo, the Nile so close she could smell it, the familiar sounds of Arabic on every street. Even the sky seemed different here. "I know--my stall, my things, were probably gone in a matter of weeks, if not days, but it's still my city."

Yaqub smiled sadly at that, and waved a hand. "Go. I will watch over your brother-in-law for you."

And she trusted him. Somehow, after twenty years in Cairo, and five in Daevabad, she was able to trust him. It was a strange, warm feeling to trust someone so thoroughly. As she walked out of his apothecary and into Cairo's early afternoon, she hoped she would not regret it.

Her stall was gone, yes, and so were the stalls of people she'd known, replaced by strangers'. Some of the fashions were different, and many of the faces, and a few of the old buildings were now only rubble and dust, but it was the same Cairean accent, the same scatterings of French and Turkish and there was _nothing_ new about the smells of the foods sold by the vendors--

Nahri's stomach rumbled and she tried to think about how she hadn't eaten for most of a day, instead of wondering how Dara must have felt, returning home after fourteen centuries, to a city almost entirely changed. She must not feel pity for him, not after he'd allied with ifrit to attack that very same city. After he'd been about to let the ifrit enslave Ali. After he'd struck--after he'd killed--Muntadhir. After what Nahri had seen....

She calmed her heart and steadied her hands, and forced herself to keep moving through the shouk. She would not relive it now. She was in Cairo, not Daevabad, and she needed to be calm as she emptied purses in passage, slipped a man's rings from his fingers, stole a scrap of silk. Keeping her hands busy kept her head busy: it was as true here as it had been in the infirmary. 

Nahri pocketed a handful of figs, waited until she was several stalls away to start eating them. This respite was only brief. She would have to leave home again, to go back to Daevabad. Her brother was there, and Ali's sister. And anyone who could do what had been do the Geziris there... Nahri shuddered to imagine what they would do to the shafit.

She would have to make sure Ali did this the clever way. He had allies in Ta Ntry, in Am Gezira. If he tried to do this without them, he would fail, and he would die, and she could not let him. She would have to--

Nahri stopped and swore. She had run out of figs, and her stomach, now reminded that food existed, was letting its discontent be known. She frowned, but she was still in the market, and there was plenty of food for sale. She nearly laughed at that--paying for food! Her!--but it was no stranger than the idea of rescuing an ancient city from her undead mother and the unholy alliances she'd made.

"Finest lamb," the vendor assured Nahri.

Which made Nahri certain that it was goat, and old goat at that. Highly spiced to disguise the taste of the meat, but not enough, and yet the smell still made her mouth water. "I'll take two," she said. "And an eggplant."

The bread was a little gritty, the meat stringy, and the spices so heavy on the pepper that Nahri had to pause a few bites in to sneeze violently. And yet she wouldn't have traded it for all the jeweled rice and lentil stews in Daevabad.

The sun was inching towards the horizon by then, and she glanced around the shouk, reluctant to leave. _This is where you belong,_ a part of her was saying, as she walked its streets. _This is and always will be your home._

And Nahri could not deny it. Cairo was her home. But for it to be safe, and for her to be safe, she would have to leave it again.

"Thank you," said Yaqub, as she handed him the bread stuffed with eggplant. He put down his pestle to take it, and Nahri stopped on the edge of the backroom, where Ali was mumbling in his opium-induced dreams. She half-wanted to ask Yaqub how he'd recognized the seal, and why he had, despite that, given them shelter and sustenance. 

Instead she grabbed the hand that wasn't holding the food she'd brought. Yaqub's hands were strong and supple. Like his dark eyes, they made him seem younger than one would think from his gray hair, his wrinkles. It did not matter to her, suddenly, what he knew and how he knew it. She trusted him. She could trust him. She needed to be able to trust him. "Thank you. For your hospitality," she said. "I've been gone so long, and Ali--you don't even know Ali." 

Yaqub shrugged. "I know that he needed help. And so, if I'm not mistaken, do you."

"You've given me more than I could ever repay." Nahri couldn't ask for more. Not with the pursuit that must be coming. "That being said--" And she took most of the money she'd stolen in the shouk, and placed it on his desk. Yaqub's eyebrows rose, and she thought he was suppressing a smile.

"Go," he said, and waved her towards the backroom. "Your friend will be waking soon enough."

He might have been pretending to be asleep again. The fact that Ali had done so earlier gave Nahri some hope that he wasn't quite as rash as she'd known him to be.

"Hello," Nahri said. She still couldn't feel his heartbeat or breath, but that didn't mean she didn't have eyes to see how tense he was on the cot.

"Where were you?" Ali asked, sitting up and then wincing, with both face and body. She was fairly sure that his pain had been diminished by time, though, and not just the opium. 

"Procuring supplies," Nahri said, and handed him the last araye.

"You left me with a human," he said, not taking the bread from her hand.

"I left you with my friend." She sat, arranging her abaya as she helped herself to more mint tea. After the afternoon sun, it was divine. "He didn't complain about it, and he was kind enough to give you food and shelter."

Ali was alert enough, embarrassed enough, to blush at that. "I only--"

"I know what you only," said Nahri, and shoved the food at him again. "Eat. We'll be on our way soon enough."

Ali gave the bread a dubious glance, and then he took one bite, and then--Nahri had seen one of Cairo's stray dogs once fall upon an unattended pile of pita, except the dog had left some scraps behind as it staggered away, sated.

"Better?" she asked. Nahri wanted him to say something about the food. Another of the things she'd been trying not to think about in the shouk was how much, years ago, when her friendship had been as uncomplicated as one between a Nahid and an al Qahtani prince could be, she had wanted to bring him back to Egypt, show him the sphinx and the pyramids, eat street food and drink karkade with him. This wasn't what she'd had in mind. 

"Wow," said Ali. "I've eaten better-tasting locust paste." He tried, and failed, to cover a burp. "Do you have more?"


End file.
